Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 (Hardcover)

~ Stephen E. Ambrose (Author) "AUGUST 13, 1859, was a hot day in Council Bluffs, Iowa..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Big Four, Union Pacific (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Abraham Lincoln, who had worked as a riverboat pilot before turning to politics, knew a thing or two about the problems of transporting goods and people from place to place. He was also convinced that the United States would flourish only if its far-flung regions were linked, replacing sectional loyalties with an overarching sense of national destiny.

Building a transcontinental railroad, writes the prolific historian Stephen Ambrose, was second only to the abolition of slavery on Lincoln's presidential agenda. Through an ambitious program of land grants and low-interest government loans, he encouraged entrepreneurs such as California's "Big Four"--Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford--to take on the task of stringing steel rails from ocean to ocean. The real work of doing so, of course, was on the shoulders of immigrant men and women, mostly Chinese and Irish. These often-overlooked actors and what a contemporary called their "dreadful vitality" figure prominently in Ambrose's narrative, alongside the great financiers and surveyors who populate the standard textbooks.

In the end, Ambrose writes, Lincoln's dream transformed the nation, marking "the first great triumph over time and space" and inaugurating what has come to be known as the American Century. David Haward Bain's Empire Express, which covers the same ground, is more substantial, but Ambrose provides an eminently readable study of a complex episode in American history. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Eminent historian Ambrose notes that he once viewed the investors and businessmen who built the transcontinental railroad as robber barons who bilked the government and the public. But in his rough-and-tumble, triumphant sagaAsure to appeal to the many readers of Ambrose's bestseller Undaunted CourageAhe presents the continent-straddling railroad, yoking east and west at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869, as a great democratic experiment, a triumph of capitalist organization, free labor, brains and determination that ushered in the American Century, galvanized trade and settlement, and made possible a national culture. To critics who charge that the railroad magnates were corrupt and grew obscenely rich and powerful through land grants and government bonds, Ambrose replies that the land grants never brought in enough money to pay the bills and, further, that the bonds were loans, fully paid back with huge interest payments. But this argument fails to convince, partly because Ambrose does a superlative job of re-creating the grim conditions in which the tracks were laid. The Central Pacific's workers were primarily Chinese, earning a dollar a day. Union Pacific workers were mostly Irish-American, young, unmarried ex-soldiers from both the Union and the Confederacy. Accidental deaths were commonplace, and the two companies, notwithstanding strikes, slowdowns and drunken vice, engaged in a frantic race, mandated by Congress, as the winner got the greater share of land and bonds. As a result of the haste, an enormous amount of shoddy construction had to be replaced. Native Americans, who wanted the iron rail out of their country, hopelessly waged guerrilla warfare against railroad builders who talked openly of exterminating them. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, letters, telegrams, newspaper accounts and other primary sources, Ambrose celebrates the railroad's unsung heroesAthe men who actually did the backbreaking work. 32 pages of b&w photos. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition, First Printing edition (August 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684846098
• ISBN-13: 978-0684846095
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (221 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #290,640 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Will the real Stephen Ambrose please stand up!, October 25, 2000

By	"waful" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

The subject is grand and the author is respected and prominent, so why has this book failed in its stated purpose? It reminds me most of the college student realizing at the last moment that his semester paper is due the next day and then scrambling to throw material together without regard to scholarship. I can only ask, "who really wrote this book?" and I speculate that it was written by Professor Ambrose's students in History 101. Either that or the author has resorted to churning out material just to capitalize on his popularity.

Ambrose's cheerleading of the accomplishments of the common American man - he does it in his WWII books and others - makes him seem a little like the Tom Clancy of the history field. Clancy succeeds because of his terrific imagination and captivating style. Ambrose succeeds when he backs it up with good writing but in this book the poor scholarship and terrible editing is a real downer!

How can any modern historian state, "The Chinese . . . needed little or no instruction in handling black powder, which was a Chinese invention . . ." (p.156). Really now! Perhaps all Chinese are good at flower arranging as well.

How can an historian of Ambrose's stature totally invert a well known event of the Civil War as he does on p.292 with the statement that "George B. McClellan's uncoded orders were captured by the Confederates before the Battle of Antietam, giving Robert E. Lee a chance to read them." For those who are unfamiliar with this incident, it was Lee's orders that were discovered by Union troops near Frederick, MD, providing the bumbling McClellan with the information he needed to head off the attempt to invade Pennsylvania.

Ambrose needs a new editor if this is what his current handler does. He tells us time and time again of the process of moving rails into place as the teams of Irish, Chinese, or Mormons try to beat some production goal. Other material is tediously repeated as though he was trying to meet his own mileage goal, further suggesting the college student padding his term paper to meet the professor's required number of pages. And little facts change from page to page - at one point the CP is 590 miles from Sacramento on April 9, while a page later the end of the CP tracks are 578 miles from Sacramento on April 27 - did they really regress during those 18 days?

Maps! Wow, would they be helpful if they were positioned relevant to the material around them. The CP work in California is discussed early in the book, so why is the map of their route placed at page 342 where the discussion is about the CP and UP competition in Utah? And even if you locate the map you want, they frequently do not show the locations that Ambrose has identified as important milestones in the progress of the transcontinental project - the lack of detail is appalling.

Professor Ambrose should have stuck with his first instincts as expressed in the acknowledgements. When his editor suggested the subject matter to him, "I hesitated. . . I wanted nothing to do with those railroad thieves." My response is only to note that when I see the Ambrose name on books in the future, I also will hesitate.

99 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transcontinental Railroad: Thru Different Eyes..., August 31, 2000

By	Gerard Chamorin (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

In his new book, "Nothing Like It in The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69", Stephen E. Ambrose is following the same process he has followed in his World War II books and his "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West": he tries to bring the reader to see things from many angles: from the top ranks (Financiers, politicians, engineers) to the individual workers. He shows the life of the Chinese workers (West side) and Irish and multinational workers (East Side); describes the life of ordinary people during the construction; shows the danger of using black powder; shows the problems with the Native American populations; analyzes the presence of some 500 African Americans after the Civil War (former Slaves from the South), with at the same time the presence of former Union and Confederate veterans IN THEIR UNIFORMS on the workplace!

One of the best passages relates to the last (golden) spike, at Promontory Summit, Utah. The story is breathtaking. The reader expects the final hammering of the spike -like the whole world on May 10, 1869- from San Francisco to New York, Philadelphia, Boston and even London (via the telegraph). I will not say what happened (I do not want to run the climax of the story for the reader!)

In conclusion, I would strongly recommend the reading of "Nothing Like it In The World". Stephen E. Ambrose is at his best... and nobody can object with his conclusion that the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad is one of most important event of the American Nineteenth Century!

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inferior to Bain's recent book on the same subject, September 23, 2000

By	David A. Kemp (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've read, enjoyed, and valued other histories by Ambrose, but this is not one of his best efforts. If you are seriously interested in the building of the first transcontinental railroad, get and read David Haward Bain's monumental Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (Viking, 1999, 797 pages), the result of fourteen years of research and the definitive modern treatment of this subject. Ambrose's book has the misfortune to follow on the heels of Bain's, and it cannot seriously compete with it. Bain's book is truly comprehensive and thorough, a labor of love; in comparison Ambrose's seems somewhat perfunctory and superficial, just another installment in the assembly line of books Ambrose has been cranking out in recent years. If you will compare the two books you will see what I mean.